Shijura

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Shijura (also known as Shiguma) is a character from the Kishin Douji Zenki series. He is a human man with blonde hair, black eyes, a pink and grey armor and a scythe.

He is the major antagonist of the Jushi ark and leader of the Jushi (aka "Curse Samurai"). The other Jushi are his four loyal servants: Amon, Anjura, Kajura, and Majura.

Shijura has two forms: Shijura is a powerful magician, who created an illusion world to capture whole Shikigami-chou. He uses his scythe to steal the peoples' souls and merges them into his armor, using them as living shields. If anything hits his armor, the people he has taken hostage, get hurt instead of him.
 * His normal, human form
 * and a stronger, demonic looking form, with two horns, two fangs and grey skin. His armor also changes colors and becomes orange, purple and grey. He turns into this after merging with the dead souls of his four servants.

Manga
Shijura first appears standing in front of a huge door in the sky. He wants to kill Zenki and Chiaki, so he can be the greatest priest of all and is completely ruthless, as he would do anything to achieve this.

When he makes his first appearance, he greatly frightens Chiaki. Shijura has a very memorable look, similar to the well known grim reaper. Chiaki mutters about Shijura being an "utter terror, completely different from the other Jushi".

Shijura then remarks that they were only chess pieces which could be disposed off at any time. This situation clearly reveals that Shijura sees the other Jushi merely as pawns that can and will be sacrificed for his advantage, further reinforcing his ruthless character.

This is further shown when he explains that he only used them to find out Zenki's weaknesses.

Unlike in the game, where he summons the other Jushi's souls for his armor, manga Shijura forcefully tears their souls from their bodies with his soul reaper scythe. This is shown when he holds up the badly wounded Anjura and slices right through her with his scythe.

He then forcefully stuffs poor Anjura into his his armor, uniting her with many other souls, including those of the other Jushi, forming Shijura's "pitch black king of radiance"-armor.

Ingame
He only appears in the first of the SNES Kishin Douji Zenki games, Battle Raiden. In this game, he is both a major character and the final boss. In the English translation by Dynamic Designs, he is called Shiguma.

Japanese version
The original, Japanese manga refers to Shijura by the same name.

The character characters page of Volume 3 features him via Kanji and Furigana writings of 死呪羅 and シジュラ respectively.

While the former carries the hidden meaning of the Death Spell Caster, the latter is simply his name Shijura, written in Katakana. Obviously, both of these are pronounciated as Shijura.

The hidden meaning of his Kanji writing is a pun on his abilities in the manga, which feature him sealing human souls inside his armor via the usage of a soul reaping scythe. Being struck by it leaves the person's body in a death-like state, as it stops moving completely.

Luckily, Zenki isn't affected by the scythe's secondary effect and thus only slashed by it, when Shijura attacks him in the manga. This allows Zenki to protect Chiaki with his body until Shijura tricks her into deciding to sacrifice herself to save the fellow inhabitants of Shikigami-chou.

Chinese version
In the Chinese version of the Manga, all that remains of Shijura's name is the Kanji writing. This causes his to become 死呪羅 (Sǐ zhòu luó), which still means "Death Spell Caster" just like in the Japanese version, but causes Shijura's actual name to be omitted in the Chinese release.

Thanks

 * Big thanks to Goki, Zenki and Vasara for adding the Japanese and Chinese Kanji and Furigana, as well as their pronounciation and their meanings!
 * Big thanks to DynamicDesigns for creating an English translation of Battle Raiden, so non-Japanese fans can enjoy the game as well!


 * -|Ingame stats and behaviour=

Shiguma
Shiguma (also known as Shijura) is a tall and armored, humanoid enemy with a soul reaper scythe and blonde hair, who starts out as a human, but quickly transforms into another form with grey skin and horns. In this new form Shiguma exclaims that his strength now equals that of a god.

Shiguma is introduced in Stage 5-4. He starts out hovering in mid-air and talking to Zenki and Chiaki in a way that can only be described as him being overly confident in his own abilities, as Shiguma assumes that he will completely annihilate them in battle.

(Shiguma: "Zenki and Chiaki, despair as you can do nothing. [...] Weep... For your death is nigh." - citation from the English translation by Dynamic Designs)

Shiguma's movements and attacks
After the introductionary speech Shiguma will call his dead servants (the bosses from the previous stages) and their souls will unite with him, allowing him to use his "pitch black king of radiance"-armor and become resistant to most of Zenki's attacks. As this is scripted, Shiguma can't be interrupted while doing this. Also unlike the earlier boss Enjuurou's flame armor, Shiguma's "pitch black king of radiance"-armor can't be undone by any of Zenki's moves.

Shiguma will start the boss battle by quickly teleporting all over the place, making it very difficult to hit him. He will try to get behind Zenki to quickly slash at him with his soul reaper scythe, causing Shiguma to cause a great deal of damage.

Shiguma's soul reaper scythe slash can be avoided by using a well timed Vajura Beam Exorcism or by a dash combined with a double jump. The latter is very hard to pull off, but gives Zenki a moment to think about his next move, while the former leaves him charging and unable to cancel the move.

Shiguma also has another variant of his soul reaper scythe slash, where his slash causes another scythe to fly at Zenki like a boomerang, causing Shiguma's attack to deal even more damage than usual.

As the fight goes on, Shiguma's speed will increase, making it not only even harder to hit him and avoiding his attacks.

Thus Shiguma is a very difficult boss that hits hard, moves fast and takes very little damage.

How to fight Shiguma
While Rudra deals a medium anmount of damage to Shiguma, it also leaves Zenki a sitting duck. Zenki will be invincible while using Rudra, but he will be vulvernable at the end of it, giving Shiguma a chance to hurt Zenki. It also has the side effect that the repetitive use of Rudra will leave Zenki with very little health, making it a very risky tactic.

Shiguma can also only be hit while he's not teleporting, making Rudra even more impractical to use as it has to be well timed.

Most of Zenki's attacks will deal very little damage to Shiguma and as mentioned beforehand, slower attacks will leave Zenki a sitting duck to the quick Shiguma.

It's advised to be on one's toes for the majority of the fight, using mostly fast attacks like the Vajura Beam Exorcism or Zenki's regular punch and avoiding Shiguma by using dashes, backsteps and the aforementioned Vajura Beam Exorcism.

Zenki should avoid using attacks that cause him to charge or stop his movement. Jumping, double jumping and the flying kick are also not advised as Shiguma will attack Zenki while he's in mid-air and might hit poor Zenki twice. (once in mid-air and a second time after Zenki has landed)

So be sure to counter Shiguma's speed with your own fast reactions and quick moves and you should stand a decent chance against him.

Shiguma's defeat
After defeating Shiguma, Chiaki will say "Yay! You did it, Zenki!", while Shiguma goes up in flames and explodes just like every other boss before him.

After this, an ending cutscene will trigger, showing Zenki and Chiaki escaping the Jushi's collapsing Cursed Castle and looking back to the beginng of the game, causing Chiaki to tell Zenki that "Ozunu's dream prediction won't come true now." Zenki will then remark that "Chiaki shouldn't be so sure about that, as as long as humans have desires, the same thing will happen over and over again."

New game plus
If this was the player's first playthrough of the game, the credits will roll and the game will now start over from the beginning as a slightly harder new game plus.

If the player has finished the new game plus instead, the game will end after the ending cutscene and return the player to the game's title screen.

To do: Add this bosses' element and elemental weakness.

Trivia

 * Unlike most of the other bosses before him, Shiguma only has one phase that lasts through the entire boss battle instead of two phases. He shares this trait with Enjuurou.
 * For an unknown reason, Shiguma's ingame sprites show him with grey hair while he has blonde hair in his mugshots. Yet, it is very possible that this might be related to color limitations on the SNES.


 * -|Gallery=